This Startup Can Turn Banks Into Fintechs in Weeks | Skyblue Analytics

Hey Google, I want to buy some Tesla shares like Tim did, Apple, whatever, whatever. And I found a place. I thought that place was trustful, so we put our money, but unfortunately was a scam and we lost the money. So I didn't understand why my local bank or even the broker where my father invested his money wouldn't allow me to buy some Tesla shares or Google or whatever. And then I realized that investment infrastructure in Latin America is 20 years behind the US, which limits the capacity of the people to invest and save for economic freedom. The problem with Latin America is basically our currencies are really bad. You know about Argentina, if you save in Argentinian pesos, even despite the fact that you do everything great, you are going to fail and you are not going to get out of poverty. There are different ways of democratizing and making people free economically. The way that we want to do is Basically to provide this technology to the institution that they already are saving and that they are already working. We are not asking them, hey, take your money to another B2C company that you don't rely on it. Because that happened to me. I got financially scammed because of that. And in Latin America, that happens a lot. I'm originally from Uruguay, from Montevideo. There I met Martin, who is my co-founder, who is the CTO. We both studied the same degree. I immigrated to Australia. I stayed there 2 and a half years. I worked as an actuarial in the derivatives markets for a huge company called AMP. Meanwhile, Martin at the same time was studying computer science. But I created Skyblue Analytics actually at the end of part of the pandemic. We didn't call it at that time Skyblue Analytics. It was me with Martin, but we started working in the financial sector and technology. The national team of Uruguay, we call it La Celeste, sky blue. So when I was in Australia and I got fired, I was with my friend and, hey, analytics is something that you do and it's something that you, that, you know, it's your core business. You should put something in front of analytics. And I say, okay, sky blue. You know, I went to Draper University and there are like 10 important phrases. Short-term sacrifice for long-term success. I have met many people that sometimes, you know, they have their family. I don't have a family right now. You know, I don't have children. So it's really important for me to focus because in two, three, four years I will have them. At the beginning, I was a little nervous because it's giving the gift. You get unfocused from the pitch, and then you have to return to give the pitch. I have here a present for.

I always appreciate when they're bribing the judges. It's Malay.

The chainsaw represents cutting excess of expenditure from the government. I really enjoy giving this gift. So 10 years ago, when I was 20, I was the only one from my group of friends who studied economics, and we all wanted to invest our first money. I was kind of the guru, so I did my market research. And I tried to find an investment platform or infrastructure that would allow me to do this in Uruguay. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one. So I went to Google. Hey Google, I want to buy some Tesla shares like Tim did, Apple, whatever, whatever. And I found a place. I thought that place was trustful, so we put our money, but unfortunately it was a scam and we lost the money. So I didn't understand why my local bank or even the broker where my father invested his money wouldn't allow me to buy some Tesla shares or Google or whatever. And then I realized that investment infrastructure in Latin America is 20 years behind the US, which limits the capacity of the people to invest and save for economic freedom. The way we have solved this, Tim, is totally different from a B2C perspective of creating a platform and going to a market. We have developed the infrastructure and the platform technology That allows for established players to modernize extremely quickly and also creating the ecosystem so millions of new fintech will develop solutions very fast on our infrastructure. Thank you very much.

So, so, so there was a brokerage that was fake that just took your money?

Yeah, basically it was a CFD and forex brokerage that you send the money, they give you a paper and they give you— if you put $3,000, you will have $10,000 in a bonus. You sign the bonus and then they tell you, hey, you cannot withdraw the money because you have to to reach this amount of transactions and it's almost impossible and there is leverage in the middle and I cry a lot, but it is what it is.

Wow.

And Martin, my co-founder, also lost money.

Where does your revenue come from?

Is that— From brokerage companies that see into portfolio—

That's all transaction?

No, right now, that's a great question. Right now it's a SaaS model business, but we are changing to transaction right now.

Sure.

Y la plataforma la tienes que adaptar para cada cliente o la tienes? The infrastructure that we have developed in the backend makes that all the widgets are 100% personalized.

And following up on that, where does the responsibility lie? Like if a you know brokerage uses your robo advisor and then for some reason your robo advisor gives some super crazy advice, whose responsibility is it?

So I can create 100,000 robo advisors to say it in some way. But you choose the portfolio that is conservative, you choose the portfolio that is moderate, you choose the portfolio that is aggressive. We just do all the backend and we have frontend solutions.

Is there a reason that you didn't just go after like the Robinhood?

I didn't go B2C because it was a headache. In each country you need regulation, which I hated. If you try to go to each country B2C, The regulation is going to kill you because you have to be compliant in each country.

All right, Sebastian, thank you very much. And thank you for the pleasure having you on Meet the Drapers.